AUDIO: IN Planned Parenthoods admit to other clinic options for Medicaid patients

June 29, 2011 – Undercover phone calls released today show Planned Parenthood of Indiana clinics admitting that they are not the only source of women’s health care for women on Medicaid. Planned Parenthood and its supporters have recently argued in support of restoring their Medicaid funding in Indiana that poor women will lose access to vital health care services if they cannot go to Planned Parenthood. Live Action, the group that recorded the calls, says its footage shows the reality is quite the opposite.

“Indiana has become Ground Zero in the national battle to defund Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion business in America,” states Live Action President Lila Rose. “As more and more states, most recently Wisconsin and Texas, continue to defund the abortion giant of millions of dollars, Planned Parenthood wants us to believe they are the only game in town when it comes to providing care for Medicaid patients. In reality, their own staff admit that they aren’t the only option for women in need.”

In an official press release, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards claimed that Indiana’s defunding of Planned Parenthood would “take away health care from thousands of women in Indiana.” Last week, Live Action’s undercover investigators called 16 of the 28 Indiana Planned Parenthood clinics posing as women on Medicaid concerned about where they could receive services if Planned Parenthood’s funding was not restored.

Planned Parenthood staffers at all 16 locations admitted that Medicaid women would still have access to medical care after the defunding. Staffers suggested local health clinics or state-assigned primary care physicians for Medicaid patients: “Your primary care doctor should be able to do [a Well Woman exam,] I mean, that’s what they’re there for,” said a Planned Parenthood in Michigan City, while the Merrillville Planned Parenthood said of a local community health center, “They have the same services we have.”

“According to Planned Parenthood’s own statistics, their 28 clinics serve less than 1% of Indiana Medicaid patients, yet they do more than 50% of Indiana abortions,” notes Rose. There are over 800 other Medicaid providers available to these women in the counties with Planned Parenthood clinics alone.”

I really can’t think of anything truthful Planned Parenthood has said in the entire debate over federal and state funding for their clinics. The most outrageous lies are the ones like Rose debunks above, and the one about how “poor women will lose access to birth control” if Planned Parenthood loses their taxpayer funding, which I easily debunked here:

1. Birth control is available over the counter at your local Walgreen’s and – for that matter – your local corner convenience store: It’s called condoms. Drug stores and convenience stores are in poor neighborhoods just like they are everywhere else.

2. Eliminating taxpayer funding for these clinics would *not* mean the clinics would go broke. It would force the likes of Planned Parenthood to divvy up their funds differently, where ‘tough’ choices would have to be made and a balance would have to be modified when it comes how much money they devote to their non-abortion services versus how much they devote to “abortion care” (now, there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one!). In other words, Planned Parenthood, in order to provide “health services” for low income women, might have to decrease the amount of money spent on abortions and put more of that money into other services they provide.

Never trust a militant “feminist.” Ever. They almost always deliberately lie, deceive, and mislead on the issue of abortion – but hey, you don’t have to believe me. Read the late Bernard Nathanson’s admissions on the false rationale for the start of the abortion movement. Nathanson, a former ‘male feminist’ of sorts who passed away this past February at the age of 84, was a co-founder of NARAL who saw the light on abortion after ultrasounds became available. Snippets:

“In 1968 I met Lawrence Lader,” says Nathanson. “Lader had just finished a book called ‘Abortion,’ and in it had made the audacious demand that abortion should be legalized throughout the country. I had just finished a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and was impressed with the number of women who were coming into our clinics, wards and hospitals suffering from illegal, infected, botched abortions.

“Lader and I were perfect for each other. We sat down and plotted out the organization now known as NARAL. With Betty Friedan, we set up this organization and began working on the strategy.”

“We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one,” recalls the movement’s co-founder. “Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million.

“Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.

“Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization.”

NARAL’s brilliantly deceitful marketing campaign, bolstered by fraudulent “research,” was uncannily successful. In New York, the law outlawing abortion had been on the books for 140 years. “In two years of work, we at NARAL struck that law down,” says Nathanson. “We lobbied the legislature, we captured the media, we spent money on public relations … Our first year’s budget was $7,500. Of that, $5,000 was allotted to a public relations firm to persuade the media of the correctness of our position. That was in 1969.”

A movement based on a steady stream of lies, one that still has to manipulate words and their definitions, and lie and deceive about statistics in order to keep the “right to choose” legal. If one has to repeatedly lie regarding just about every aspect of what their movement is about, that tells me alot about that movement – and none of it good. In this case, it’s especially horrifying because we’re talking about the lives of the unborn – America’s most vulnerable.

Abortion advocates truly have no shame at all. No shame whatsoever. Tragic.